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Trump Inspects Wall Prototypes, Calls on Congress for Money

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump traveled to opposition territory -- California -- to fire up support for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a project that has encountered resistance in Congress.

Trump on Tuesday inspected eight wall prototypes constructed in the desert south of San Diego as he fights to overcome opposition from Democrats and skepticism from some Republican lawmakers over the cost of a barrier that was a central promise of his presidential campaign.

“Congress must fund the border wall and prohibit grants to sanctuary cities,” Trump said, referring to cities and states that limit their cooperation with federal authorities on immigration in objection to the president’s policies.

When asked whether he would veto a spending bill that would preserve grants to sanctuary cities or not fund the wall, Trump said he’s “looking at it.”

“We’re looking at it very, very strong. Sanctuary cities are protecting a horrible group of people in many cases, criminals,” he said.

House and Senate negotiators are trying to wrap up work on a $1.2 trillion spending bill in order to get it passed by March 23 in order to avert another government shutdown.

Lawmakers plan to include $1.6 billion in funding in fiscal 2018 for portions of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, as requested by the Trump administration, Republican Senator John Boozman of Arkansas said on Monday. The amount is equal to administration’s request to fund three sections of border wall.

Boozman said a plan to strip funding from so-called sanctuary cities wouldn’t pass muster in the Senate, where Democrats have more leverage to block legislation.

California Opposition

Trump’s tour of the sample wall sections at Otay Mesa Port of Entry stirred plans for protests in a state where the project is deeply unpopular, as is the president. A Public Policy Institute of California poll released in January found that 73 percent of adults in the state opposed the wall while just a quarter supported it. Trump lost the state by a two-to-one margin in 2016, the worst performance of any modern Republican presidential candidate.

Trump has maintained that he expects Mexico to ultimately pay for the wall, perhaps as part of a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has repeatedly rejected the idea. The issue has helped sour relations between the two leaders.

He also raised the possibility in a tweet Tuesday of justifying the cost of the wall based on savings in government spending which immigration opponents anticipate from the boundary. The Twitter message cited estimates by the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower levels of immigration.

“According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the $18 billion wall will pay for itself by curbing the importation of crime, drugs and illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole,” Trump tweeted.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded in a 2016 report that immigration in recent decades has raised overall U.S. economic growth.

First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments, mainly at the state and local levels, than are native-born Americans, in large part because of the cost of educating their children, the report found. However, as adults, those second-generation immigrants are among the strongest economic contributors to the country and pay proportionately more in taxes than the rest of the native-born population.

The trip is Trump’s first presidential visit to California, the nation’s most populous state and an engine of growth that, if it were a country, would rank as the world’s sixth-largest economy. He will also headline a Republican National Committee fundraiser in Beverly Hills, where tickets cost as much as $250,000.

The state’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, sent Trump a back-handed invitation on Monday suggesting a change of itinerary to add a visit to a construction site for what he said is the nation’s first true high-speed rail line.

“In California we are focusing on bridges, not walls,” Brown wrote.

Trump struck a different tone about the state’s needs, saying “the state of California is begging us to build walls in certain areas.” Trump said of the barrier that he wants “to make it perfecto.”

Brown’s government and environmental advocacy groups have sued to block construction of the wall, claiming that the administration acted illegally when it waived certain environmental rules. U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom Trump attacked during his 2016 campaign, said in an initial ruling last month that the administration had legal authority to proceed with the project.

The animosity between the Trump administration and California Democratic leaders was demonstrated on Monday, when the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement brushed back House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein for criticizing his agency’s work.

Pelosi issued a Feb. 28 statement after ICE conducted what she called “sweeping raids across Northern California.” She said the arrests of more than 150 people were “intended solely to terrorize innocent immigrant families.”

The acting ICE director, Thomas Homan, told reporters at a briefing on Monday that Pelosi’s remarks “were just beyond the pale.”

Eight Prototypes

The White House requested $25 billion for the wall as part of a longer list of demands last month in exchange for granting legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. Democrats rejected the deal over proposed restrictions on legal immigration. Trump has said that he believes the wall would cost about $18 billion and that the rest of the money can go toward other border security projects.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection solicited bids last year using existing border security funding to build eight wall prototypes and awarded contracts to six private companies for mock-ups that are each 30 feet long and as much as 30 feet high. The agency is testing how well each prototype withstands attempts at breaching, climbing, digging and other factors.

Berkeley, Oakland and other cities have sought to stop doing business with firms involved with the wall, prompting the Associated General Contractors of America to ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to sue to prevent states and localities from denying contracts or divesting from companies that participate in the barrier’s construction. There’s been no action on the contractor association’s request, Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the organization, said on Monday.